


A Banner Day

by freudensteins_monster



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers Tower, Bruce Banner Feels, Darcy Lewis is Bruce Banner's Daughter, Gen, Hulk Smash, Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Hulk, The Hulk also likes pizza, The Hulk likes Bugs Bunny cartoons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 08:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8094334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudensteins_monster/pseuds/freudensteins_monster
Summary: "You don’t have to be scared of me.”“I’m not scared of you,” Darcy replied quietly, unable to meet his gaze.“Darcy,” Bruce sighed. “In the past two weeks you’ve spilled more coffee than you’ve drunk.”“I’m not scared of you,” Darcy repeated adamantly. “I’m really not.”“Then what is it? Why do you keep avoiding me, and holding your breath when I walk past?”





	

Darcy rode the elevator up to the Avengers residential floor with Jane, gnawing on the strings of her beanie as she watched the floor numbers whiz past.

“Ew! Gross, Darcy,” Jane scolded, balancing a moving box on her hip in order to reach over the tug the slobbery mess out of Darcy’s mouth. “Stop freaking out,” she ordered. “Stop thinking of them as ‘The Avengers’, and just think of them as people. Because that’s what they are, just people.”

“Yeah, sure…” Darcy muttered unconvinced, shifting her own moving box into a more comfortable position. Of course they were just people. Extraordinary, alien killing, world saving people. Darcy threw her head back and sighed loudly. A freak out was pretty inevitable, especially when _he_ was going to be there.

The doors opened onto the residential floor and much to Darcy’s dismay all of the residents were in attendance to meet them.

“Jane! Darcy!” Thor bellowed happily, striding over to greet them. He kissed Jane chastely before taking the box off her hands, almost crushing it with his godly strength. He turned to his team mates and introduced his ladylove and her assistant to them, and then began pointing out his teammates and rattling off their names – like Darcy didn’t already have them memorised.

“And lastly, Dr Banner, otherwise known as the mighty Hulk,” Thor beamed proudly.

There was a high-pitched squeak and all eyes turned to Darcy.

“Sorry,” she blushed and stammered, trying to get a better grip on the box of personal items in her arms. “Heavy…” she added lamely. Thor took the box off her hands, balancing it on top of the other one, and announced that he was going to show Jane and Darcy to their rooms. Darcy trailed behind, her eyes on Thor’s back to avoid seeing Dr Banner’s hurt expression. She couldn’t stop imagining it though, and barely slept a wink the first week of her stay at Avengers Tower.

** *** **

Bruce tried, and failed, to forget about Dr Foster’s assistant, Darcy. Her reaction when Thor introduced them hadn’t gone unnoticed by anyone. Tony had tried to laugh it off and convince him that Darcy was just a little star struck, but one glance at Natasha told him he hadn’t been imagining the girl’s fear.

He didn’t blame Darcy, didn’t blame anyone, for being afraid of him, but it made things difficult when he had to live and work in such close quarters with her. Whenever he walked passed Dr Foster’s lab Darcy would freeze, her eyes not moving off her keyboard, until he was out of sight. And if he ever had to actually go _into_ Dr Foster’s lab Darcy would make a hasty retreat under the guise of grabbing a coffee, no matter the time of day, no matter if she already had a cup of coffee on her desk.

Bruce decided to address the problem about two weeks after their arrival when his presence in the lab had caused Darcy to drop a full cup of coffee onto Jane’s laptop. She’d freaked out and apologised to a frustrated Jane and promised to stay back until she’d recovered what she could of Jane’s latest work and re-entered what she couldn’t.

Bruce waited her out, stepping into the hallway as Darcy exited the lab a little after midnight.

“Darcy,” he called softly, trying not to cringe at the way she reacted to the sound of his voice. “Might I have a moment?”

Darcy spun back around, hands gripping the strap of her messenger bag tightly, as she took a few tentative steps towards Bruce.

“What’s up, Doc?” she replied, faking a small smile which Bruce returned.

“I just wanted to talk to you… about me. I need you to know that you’re not in any danger around me. I do everything I can to not ‘hulk out’, and Tony has a dozen emergency protocols in place if the worse should happen. And he would never let me stay here in the first place if he didn’t believe I had a handle on things. You don’t have to be scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Darcy replied quietly, unable to meet his gaze.

“Darcy,” Bruce sighed. “In the past two weeks you’ve spilled more coffee than you’ve drunk.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Darcy repeated adamantly. “I’m really not.”

“Then what is it? Why do you keep avoiding me, and holding your breath when I walk past?”

Darcy fidgeting nervously, struggling to come up with an acceptable lie.

“Seriously, Darcy,” Bruce pleaded. “We need to figure this out. It’s affecting your work, and Jane’s work… and it’s affecting me,” he added sadly.

Darcy looked up at his big puppy dog eyes and sighed, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

“I know you’re not a threat, not to me anyway. You’re like the chillest guy I’ve ever met. You deal with Tony Stark on a regular basis and his tower’s still standing. If that’s not proof that you’ve got the whole ‘Hulk smash!” thing under control, I don’t know what is,” Darcy rambled nervously. “But it’s just… I need to tell you something. Not necessarily a _bad_ something, but it could potentially freak you out, and I don’t want to be the reason you break your green-free streak.”

“Okay…” Bruce mused, regarding the frazzled assistant curiously. “How about I step back into my lab,” he said, doing just that. “That way, if I do freak out, Jarvis will put the lab on lock down while I, uh… un-freak out.”

“Okay,” Darcy nodded anxiously. “That might work.”

“So…” Bruce probed, opening his arms expectantly as he waited just inside of the lab doorway, shifting his weight. “What do you need to tell me?”

Darcy took a moment, psyching herself up before reaching into her bag for her Stark phone. She opened up her photo gallery, flicking quickly through the images until she found the one she wanted. She hesitated briefly before handing it to Bruce.

“Do you recognise her?”

Bruce glanced from Darcy to the picture of a brunette woman in her early twenties dressed in a somewhat tragic early 90s wardrobe. He studied it intently, his lips quirked into a small smile when he recalled the face.

“Janelle Cohen…” he murmured wistfully. “We… we dated for bit back at Desert State,” Bruce mused. “God, that seems like a lifetime ago.”

“Her married name’s Lewis. And it was exactly my lifetime ago,” Darcy muttered under breath, suddenly becoming terribly interested in her shoes.

Bruce froze. He tore his gaze away from the phone and risked a glance at Darcy. She had her mother’s lips, her nose, but her eyes… Bruce was more familiar with her eyes. He saw those same eyes in the mirror, nine times out of ten.

“Dr Banner,” chimed the ever polite voice of JARVIS. “Your vitals are spiking to concerning levels.”

“Uh, yeah… JARVIS?” Bruce muttered numbly, taking a step back further into his lab. “Let’s go Level One shut down, just to be safe,” he added, fumbling blindly for a seat as heavy doors slammed down over both exits.

Darcy kept quiet, watching the poor doctor deal with her revelation as a pit grew in her stomach. Bruce’s hands started trembling and he clenched his fists.

“Hey!” Darcy cried out, tapping urgently on the glass. “Don’t break my phone. It’s brand new, and I just downloaded, like, six new apps onto there.”

Bruce laughed sharply, putting the phone gently onto the desk before resting his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Darcy said, just loud enough to be heard through the thick glass. “I never meant to tell you like this. My mom never hid the fact that her husband was my stepfather, but I didn’t know you were my bio dad until I was twelve. My mom took me out for ice cream and told me all about your fling senior year, and that she never told you about me. She tried to push me towards not looking you up, but I couldn’t help myself. I read all of your published papers,” she gushed. “I wanted to meet you so bad, so I studied really hard and I got a scholarship to Culver where you were teaching. I had it all planned out,” she smiled ruefully. “But a few weeks before I graduated…”

“I kind of destroyed a few of the science buildings,” Bruce smiled sadly.

“Yeah… I still went to Culver, despite the fact that my perfect father-daughter meet cute was ruined,” she huffed in annoyance. “BioChem felt like a waste of time without you there, so I switched majors a few times before I found PoliSci. And I kind gave up on the possibility of ever meeting you, what with you being on the run and all. But then Jane got invited to the tower.”

“Your behaviour makes a lot more sense now,” Bruce mused after a long drawn out silence.

“I could have handled it better,” Darcy conceded, her words coinciding with the release of the security doors.

“Dr Banner, as your vital signs are now all well within normal parameters I have cancelled the lockdown.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Bruce acknowledged, shifting to the doorway where Darcy stood anxiously, her sweater clad arms wrapped around her middle. He gave her back her phone and they exchanged nervous smiles. “Well, Darcy…” Bruce sighed tiredly, running a hand through his already mussed up hair. “Could I take you out for ice cream?” he asked with a wry smile. Darcy laughed and fell in step with him as they headed for the communal kitchen.

Several minutes later they were seated opposite each other at one end of the large dining table, enjoying the companionable silence as they ate a late dinner. Bruce was digging into a tub of Matcha Green Tea and White Chocolate ice cream from Tony’s private gourmet collection, whilst Darcy was hoeing into a tub of Cherry Garcia named “Clint.”

“So, how’s your mom?” Bruce asked.

“She’s good,” Darcy replied automatically. “She heads up a genetics lab in Chicago.”

“And your, uh, stepfather?”

“He’s a lawyer. They met when they were working at the same big pharma company, their hands touched as they both reached for the last plate of fries at the cafeteria,” Darcy snorted. “When they started getting serious he got a job at some high profile law firm to avoid conflict of interest and never looked back,” she added bitterly.

“You don’t like him?” Bruce surmised.

“It’s not that I don’t like him. He’s my dad, you know?” Darcy said with a shrug. “It’s just that his work always came first, and mom and their son came second. He wasn’t awful exactly… just busy,” Darcy explained.

“There are worse fathers,” Bruce added with a tight smile. He cleared his throat and not-so-subtly changed the topic, “You’ve got a brother?”

“Yeah,” Darcy replied, smiling warmly as she thought about him. “Bennett. He’s a great kid. He’s going to Princeton in the fall. He was captain of his high school’s championship debate team so dad’s got his fingers crossed for law school, but I don’t know,” she hummed. “I saw him in his school play last year, he played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, and I think he’s caught the acting bug, so my money’s on him transferring to a performing arts college by the end of the year. He’s the only one I really keep in touch with,” she admitted, her smile fading as she began to poke at her ice cream distractedly.

“Why’s that?”

Darcy sighed and pushed the ice cream away. “It’s hard to have an honest conversation with my parents after signing a stack of NDAs taller than I am. Bennett’s happy to talk about random shit, but mom and dad always want explanations and details. They want to know why I’m wasting my degree following Jane around and there’s just no way for me to make them understand. Every time I think about telling them everything I get this mental image of Fury appearing out of nowhere and yelling, ‘Don’t you dare, Lewis!’”

“I’m sorry, Darcy,” Bruce said, squeezing her hand before collecting their ice cream tubs and returning them to their hiding places. “That’s got to be difficult.”

“Meh, it’s fine,” she replied, waving dismissively. “Next time I talk to my folks I can tell them that I’m getting a paycheck from Stark Industries. That outta placate them for a while. And who knows, I might even be working in a department halfway relevant to my major in a couple of weeks.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Tony apparently told Pepper about me and my appalling lack of a hard science background. She said there might be an opening in the public relations department.”

“Wow, that’s really great, Darcy. Really great,” he repeated as they hovered awkwardly in the dining room.

“Just so you know, I don’t want anything from you,” Darcy blurted when the silence became too much for her. “Not like money, or a kidney, or anything. But I’d like to get to know you. Do you want to get to know me?” Darcy asked, her heart on her sleeve.

Bruce regarded Darcy soberly and tried to ignore the negative voice in his head, the one that almost always won. It said that having a child, even an adult one, was a liability, and being near him would inevitably get Darcy hurt, and how would he live with himself if something happened to her? But Bruce looked at her, this bright young woman, and saw everything he’d missed out on life, everything he thought he could never have, and he found he couldn’t deny himself.

“Yes, Darcy. I’d like to get to know you too.”

Darcy broke out into a huge smile, so happy she practically glowed. “We could do dinner again?” she suggested eagerly.

“Sure, but perhaps something a little more substantial next time,” he smiled.

“What are you talking about?” Darcy scoffed. “Ice cream is its own perfect food group.”

“Is it now?” Bruce chuckled as they wandered down the hallway to their respective rooms.

“Of course. Pizza’s another one, naturally,” she said, listing them off on her fingers. “And all other Italian food is another, and Mexican food, and Chinese food…”

** *** **

True to their word Bruce and Darcy had dinner together at least once a week, usually after Darcy finished up late and found Bruce still tinkering away in his labs. She ordered out from somewhere different each time (on Tony’s credit card) and they shared takeaway containers across a lab table. Darcy would talk foreign policy and environmental politics, Bruce would share real world examples from his travels, and the somewhat strained awkwardness of their initial meeting seemed like a distant memory.

When Pepper came through and got Darcy an interview for a PR position Tony bought her a new handbag (Pepper picked it out), and Jane went shopping with her for a new interview getup. After an excruciating phone call with her parents, wherein they offered her conflicting advice and begged her “for the love of God” not to screw up such an amazing opportunity, Darcy took refuge in Bruce’s lab. He didn’t say much, but he shared a pot of his favourite calming tea with her and squeezed her hand before she left.

When Darcy danced back to her room after being told she was the successful applicant there was a Hulk plushie sitting atop an old issue of Scientific American, a colourful array of post-it notes jutting out of its pages, waiting on her doorstop. She fell asleep hugging them both.

** *** **

Bruce had grown accustomed to Darcy’s near-constant presence in his life and found himself missing her more than expected when she began her new job several floors below him. They still had their weekly dinner dates, but he missed looking up from his work to see her and Jane arguing across the hall over whether coffee and pop-tarts constituted a proper lunch. Bruce had thought Darcy would be pro coffee and pop-tarts, but apparently when it came to Jane’s wellbeing she was decidedly anti. He grew nostalgic for the days when Tony would whinge ad nauseam about Darcy’s music, so much so that he’d asked Darcy for musical recommendations one night over sushi rolls. She emailed him a playlist the next morning. He played it every day and turned up the volume when Tony complained.

A month into Darcy’s new gig Bruce caught himself smiling when he heard the now familiar clip-clip-clip of Darcy’s “PR pumps,” as she lovingly referred to them. She waved at him but ducked into Jane’s lab. There was a short battle of wills – Jane gesturing emphatically at her machines and Darcy promising Jane that her work would still be there when they got back – before Darcy emerged victorious, dragging her former boss behind her.

“Hey, Bruce,” she called, hovering in her doorway. “We’re just heading out to a bar down the street to celebrate my first month on the job. Care to join us?” she asked to be polite. They both knew he was going to decline her offer.

“Thanks Darcy, but I’ve got a lot of work to do here.”

“Okay. Maybe next time.”

“Hey! How come Bruce gets to keep working?” Jane protested.

“Because the Other Guy doesn’t like crowds, Jane. Come on,” Darcy hissed, pulling her towards the elevator.

Bruce smiled to himself as they walked towards the elevator bank and started thinking about what he’d like to have for dinner the next time Darcy dropped by.

** *** **

Tony was lost in a sea of holographic blueprints, trying to figure out how to put SHIELD’s stealth technology into one of his suits. True, he was a more “overt is the new covert” kind of guy, but stealth and invisibility had its uses. Suddenly the sea drained away.

“JARVIS, what the hell?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Dr Foster has activated her emergency beacon,” JARVIS announced calmly, pulling up several screens of video feed. “Traffic cameras have her running towards the tower. She looks quite upset.”

“Call her,” Tony said, already suiting up.

“Tony!” Jane’s frantic voice shouted when the call connected.

“Foster, what happened?”

“They grabbed Darcy! They wanted me but Darcy tasered one of them. Told me to run. They grabbed her, Tony!” Jane cried.

“It’s alright. We’ll get her back,” Tony promised. “Just get to the lobby and stay with security until Thor comes for you. JARVIS will stay on the line with you.” He disconnected on his end, trusting JARVIS to send Thor downstairs without prompting. “J, has Darcy got a tracker on her?” Tony called as he clanked his way towards the nearest exit.

“The one in the lining of her handbag is currently moving down Lexington Avenue, just past 47th Street.”

 “Alert the team. Tell Cap and Widow to head to the garage and catch up to them. I’m going to fly ahead,” he announced as his face plate flipped down. He stepped out on to his landing pad and almost toppled over the sides when a deafening roar shook the whole tower. A second later the Hulk burst through the wall of windows on the 63rd floor and made the mother of all craters on Park Avenue.

“What the hell, Bruce?! I did not call a Code Green!” Tony shouted, ignoring the fact that Bruce couldn’t hear him. “JARVIS, did you tell Bruce ‘Code Green’?”

“Of course not, sir. I simply apprised him of the situation. He reacted poorly.”

“No shit!” Tony cursed as he flew after the giant green rage monster.

** *** **

Darcy was not panicking. She was keeping quiet, focusing on her breathing, ignoring the guns pointed at her, and not panicking. Jane had gotten away, that’s all that mattered. She’d alert the team and someone would come after her. Everything would be fine, she told herself over and over again.

“What the hell…” she heard the driver mutter, his quiet confusion turning to terrified swearing as the green object in his side mirror got bigger and bigger. Darcy took the Hulk’s roar as an early warning and braced herself just as the van came to violently sudden stop. The kidnappers were practically wetting themselves as the roof of the van was peeled off and a huge green hand reached in and pulled Darcy out. After depositing her safely on the street the Hulk  turned his attention back on the would-be kidnappers, a green fist raised above their heads.

“No!” Darcy screamed, stepping between the Hulk and his targets. “No Hulk Smash!” The Hulk regarded the little human curiously and, growling, jabbed a finger at the van. “You’ve scared the shit out of them, quite literally,” Darcy called up to him. “You don’t have to kill them. Leave them for the cops. Please, dad,” she begged.

The Hulk grumbled in annoyance and lowered his fist, but not before yanking the sides of the roof together, effectively trapping the kidnappers in their own mangled van. The Hulk crouched down beside Darcy, his green eyes looking her over as he huffed and puffed.

“BUNNY,” the Hulk rumbled, gingerly patting Darcy’s head. Nervous laughter bubbled up in her chest and Darcy cried tears of relief. She was totally going to pay Bruce out for the pet name later, though technically it was her fault for bringing up classic cartoons over tacos three days earlier. It had led to the pair bonding over wanting to name their childhood pets ‘George’ after a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But whatever, Darcy had been had been kidnapped so Bruce totally wasn’t allowed to use ‘George’ against her.

“Yeah, I guess that’s me,” Darcy replied, grinning from ear to ear.

“BUNNY HURT?” the Hulk asked, gesturing at the bloodied sleeve of her work blouse.

“Oh,” Darcy mumbled, noticing the injury for the first time. “No, it’s just a cut. I’m okay.”

The Hulk grunted his approval and began to notice his surroundings, specifically the all too nosey crowd that was gathering around him.

“Hey,” Darcy called out, reaching out to him to hold his attention. “How about you walk me home, huh?” she asked, leading him away from the scene as Tony touched down. “Hey, big guy, what do you think about pizza?”

“HULK LIKE PIZZA.”

** *** **

Tony alighted on the Avengers Tower landing pad, looking odder than usual with Darcy’s Givenchy bag resting the crook of a red and gold plated arm.

“Well, I finally managed to cut the bad guys out of their van, without cutting them in half, and handed them over the authorities. JARVIS tells me they’re singing like canaries. Not that anyone cares,” he said to the room at large when he realised they were all staring at Bruce and Darcy as they made short work of a couple of pizzas. Natasha was on Darcy’s other side, cleaning the cut on her arm whilst Steve stood to attention nearby. Thor sat across from them with Jane sitting on his knee, leaning into him as he moved his hand in soothing circles over her back. Clint, despite it being early evening, looked like he’d just dragged himself out of bed and was leaning against the couch with a tight grip on a coffee pot.

“I take it from the lack of shouting no one’s asked Bruce – What the hell?!” Tony shouted, as he stepped out of his suit.

“What?” Bruce queried with slice halfway up to his mouth.

“Don’t give me that, Bruce,” Tony sneered, rolling his eyes. “You know perfectly well ‘what.’ There was no reason for a Code Green – I could have handled it. You broke a lot of windows. A lot of very expensive windows. Why?”

“It was Darcy,” Bruce shrugged, patting Darcy’s hair affectionately. Darcy smiled brightly at his attentions.

“Jesus, Bruce,” Tony grimaced. “I knew you two were getting chummy, but come on! She’s young enough to be your daughter.”

“Tony,” Bruce sighed wearily. “She _is_ my daughter.”

“Bullshit,” Tony shot back without missing a beat. “Did you do a DNA test, or are you just taking Short’n’Stacked’s word for it?”

The pair sighed, taking off their glasses to pinch the bridge of their noses in frustration. They then tilted their heads in the same way before putting their glasses back on. They couldn’t have been more in sync without professional choreography.

“Whoa…” Tony muttered. “No freaking way.”

Clint stared down at his coffee like it had betrayed him before shuffling back to his room muttering something about it being ‘too early for this’.

Natasha barely reacted, her movements stilling for the briefest of moments before she continued bandaging Darcy’s arm. “So I take it that’s what had you so tightly wound when you first arrived?” she surmised, taping down the bandage and packing away the first aid kit. “You’ll be a bigger target now,” she added, sparing Bruce a glance. “Not that too many people will be stupid enough to risk the Hulk’s wrath. Still, I’ll check your schedule and do up a training plan. I’ll have it emailed to you in the morning.”

“Training?” Darcy asked nervously, looking down at her pizza like it might be her last slice for the foreseeable future.

“Self-defence and situational awareness mostly. I’ll also go over all the ‘so you’ve been kidnapped, now what?’ protocols we have in place.”

“Oh. Okay, cool,” Darcy nodded, hoeing into her pizza before it was taken from her.

“I take it this a recent development?” Steve asked Bruce.

“Darcy’s known since she was a kid, but she only told me about a month ago.”

“Remind me to tell Jane all about it in the morning,” Darcy said to Thor, gesturing to the sleeping astrophysicist in his arms.

“I’ll go over building security with JARVIS,” Steve offered seeing as though Tony was still in shock. “And you should talk to Pepper about preparing a press release about your relationship. There will probably some questions about it after tonight.”

“Already done,” Darcy piped up. “I did up about three different versions after I told Bruce. What?” she asked with a mouthful of pizza when all eyes turned to her. “Public relations,” she shrugged.  

Bruce and Darcy shared a smile before turning their attention back to their pizza, inviting the others to join them for a quiet meal while Tony’s stunned silence lasted.

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- I know most meet-cutes are usually romantic, but I've checked and people have used the phrase to indicate the start of various types of relationships.  
> \- Matcha Green Tea and White Chocolate ice cream is a thing. It's part of Connoisseur's Brooklyn (ultimate hipster) range.  
> \- The Bugs Bunny cartoon referenced is "The Abominable Snow Rabbit". Classic.


End file.
